Yoga for the Mind Part 3: Setting
By: Anna Hallett, Director, The Writing Party (Yoga for the Mind Part 3: Setting)
Time to stretch your imagination again. In this Yoga for the Mind Part 3, we will focus on setting.
Setting can function as a backdrop for your story or can bring its own personality like another character. Fill your written world with ambiance, atmosphere, people, and objects. Fill the senses with smells, sounds, temperature, color, and texture. Set the tone with words that are positive, neutral, or negative to convey impressions of joy, gloom, foreboding, fear, or whimsy. Describe the people who inhabit the space and how they interact with their environment. Remember to pepper the space with objects to bring it alive.
For more ideas, read “5 Tips for Vivid Writing.”
Setting is also an important component to establishing mood. Use sensory impressions to influence the tone that permeates a scene. Is the environment gray and dreary, cold and full of shadows, bright and colorful, plush and decadent, sparse and plain? The environment can be a useful tool for showing the mood of your character (instead of telling). Does your character notice the brightly colored flowers in the vase or the drooping bulbs whose dull petals are falling onto the faded lace tablecloth? Does your character notice the cobwebs in the corner or the sunlight illuminating the chorus of books splayed across the table?
Below are a few exercises you can use to practice writing setting. Perhaps one will inspire your next story or novel. Have fun exploring your creative side with these Yoga for the Mind poses.
Yoga for the Mind Exercises
- Describe your Main Character walking into your home. What is your MC’s impression of your home?
- Write a description of your Happy Place.
- Describe a place that frightens you.
- Take a walk and bring a notebook to record what you observe. Describe the sights, smells, and sounds. How do you feel?
- Use magazines, Pinterest, or another source to furnish an imaginary room to your liking or for your MC. You may even cut out items and arrange them physically.
- Find an attractive landscape painting and describe it as though you are there in the painting. Describe your sensory impressions of the space.
- Find a description of setting in a book or story and rewrite it to give the opposite impression.
- Describe the room you are currently in. Rewrite your description to create different moods: horror, suspense, joy, anger, romance, etc.
- Describe a fantastical place such as a place in the future, outer space, or a fantasy land.
- Write a description of a place that has special meaning for you. Why is the setting so important to you? What people and objects inhabit the place?
For more writing ideas, order The Writing Party Inspirations or Contact Us to schedule a Writing Party event in your area, for your private group, or as a corporate team building event.
To see other writing inspiration ideas like “Yoga for the Mind Part 3: Setting,” check out The Writing Party Articles Page.